For that song, Boone said the audience “gave him a nice hand.” But his second was “That’s Alright (Mama),” which is now recognized as his official debut single -- and it really rocked the house.“They loved it and wanted more,” Boone recalled. In 1973, he and his wife Priscilla Presley divorced. And we had dinner together. I got all the screams that night and it’s the last and only time we ever appeared together [on stage].”Boone said the two men became good friends and their friendship lasted over the years even as Presley skyrocketed to fame as “the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.”“[We were] two boys from Tennessee,” he said. “He had not had a hit record yet…. Unlike the star, who was famous for his squeaky clean image, Presley had already embodied a bad boy persona before fame.“He sorta looked like the guy that their moms didn’t want them to associate with, ‘cause he looked like the rebel at school that wasn’t on the sports team and wasn’t concerned about grades, maybe had a pack of cigarettes rolled up under his sleeve and laughing at the guys that were taking school seriously,” Boone explained.The first song Presley performed was “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” a bluegrass track by Bill Monroe. Boone, along with his wife and four daughters, were doing a family act together and heading to Orlando from Memphis.“The airport was all abuzz because Elvis was about to fly to Las Vegas and his Cadillac limo was out on the tarmac and he was waiting to get on until the last second ‘cause he was still nervous about flying,” he said.“We waited at the gate for him to get out of the car and come up,” Boone continued. or redistributed. He was 42, the same age as Boone.At the time, Boone was at a barbershop in Pittsburgh while in town to perform with his family.“Some guy came running in saying Elvis Presley died,” Boone recalled. On Aug. 16, 1977, Presley was found unconscious in his Graceland mansion and rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to History.com. Name’s Elvis Presley.’ I said, ‘Really? (Photo by John Springer Collection/Corbis via Getty Images)(Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)(Photo by Fotos International/Archive Photos/Getty Images) So he left. “I said, ‘Is it anybody I know?’ He said, ‘No, you wouldn’t have heard of him.
He was with two or three of his buddies.
We were just two lucky kids from Tennessee loving it.”Boone said the last time the two crossed paths was July 1977, a month before Presley’s sudden death. We played tag football with some of my buddies like Ricky Nelson and others. This beautiful melody was written by Russian composer Ion Ivanovici and words were added by Al Jolson and Saul Chaplin. “He came up, we talked a few minutes, took a picture -- I’ve got a picture of that meeting. EXCLUSIVE: Pat Boone still vividly remembers meeting his opening act Elvis Presley, “the scared young kid” from Tennessee, in 1955. He was wearing scuffed up white shoes like me, white bucks… I told him, ‘Bill Randall thinks big things may be ahead for you.’ [He said], ‘I don’t know about that, but I hope so.’ And he just leaned back against the wall and his buddies closed in around him. All market data delayed 20 minutes. I’ve seen his name on a jukebox in Dallas, but he’s a hillbilly, he’s country.’ He said, ‘Yeah, he’s known as a rockabilly down South and he’s on a show called ‘Louisiana Hayride’ once a week.’”According to Boone, Presley at the time was singing “hillbilly songs with kind of a rock beat,” which intrigued him. “We both rented homes in Bel Air.
“He said, ‘Boone, you’re always going the wrong way.’ I said, ‘Elvis, it depends on where you’re coming from.’ As I say, we lived our lives differently, but we had a lot in common as well.”This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2020 FOX News Network, LLC. We were both filming movies at 20th Century Fox at the same time.
Pat Boone remained friends with Elvis Presley until the King's death. “But that’s all he had on his record, both sides.